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GIANT SQUID HAVElong been the stuff of legend but it seems reality is more gruesome than fiction – as the monsters of the sea are cannibals.

Scientists have just discovered the enormous creatures, which can weigh 250kg, grow up to 20m long and have eyes as large as a human head, like nothing better than to snack on their own – sometimes even during sex.

A team from the University of Tasmania, Australia, analysed the gut contents of a male giant squid caught off the island’s western coast.

Scientists were able to make out three tentacle fragments and 12 squid beaks in the animal they examined.

‘This strongly suggests cannibalism,’ team member Simon Jarman told New Scientist magazine. The work builds on a discovery by New Zealand scientists who found evidence of cannibalism in a female squid – but they thought it was accidental.

They even found that cannibalism could take place during sex.

‘The male giant squid has to use a puny 15g brain to coordinate 150kg of weight, 10m of length and a 1.5m-long penis,’ said Steve O’Shea of the Auckland University of Technology.

‘He plunges this penis into the female’s arms, which unfortunately are right next to her beak.

‘Because he is coordinating so much with so little occasionally bits get chewed off when they inadvertently get too close to the beak.’